This past weekend was the best powder days we have seen so far this year. We headed up to the slopes early on Saturday morning with our friend Tracey who was visiting from Chicago. After a rather sketchy drive over Vail Pass we eventually made it over to Beaver Creek. There we met up with Tracey’s brother Jay who joined us last year in Steamboat. The snow never seemed to stop the entire time we were there, and the conditions were mostly ideal. There was some thick patchy fog at times, that really made it hard to see the terrain, but we had many great runs!

Originally we planned to drive back over the pass to Breckenridge after our day in Beaver Creek, but decided that might not be the best idea with all of the snow that was falling. So we opted to switch to a new hotel on the western side of the pass. One lesson we quickly learned as we pulled out of the parking lot was that there is a place called Eagle-Vail that is close to Beaver Creek and another place just called Eagle that is 20 miles further west. Unfortunately the hotel we booked was way out in Eagle and not in the nearby Eagle-Vail. I wonder if this is a common problem?

After an uneventful evening in Eagle, we woke up early Sunday morning to make the drive back closer to Denver with a stop for a day on the slopes at Keystone. We ran into a few traffic issues along the way, but eventually arrived around 9 am for an early start. On one of Tracey’s prior visits we took her out on the snowcat rides to the Outback Bowls, which she (and everyone else) wanted to do again. We immediately worked our way out there, and even though we discovered that the snowcat was not running, we decided to make the short uphill hike so we could drop down into the bowls anyway.

I was so glad we decided to hike, as the powder was incredible! I’d say at the top we were in close to a foot of fresh snow and later in the trees we found spots with at least a foot and a half! We had so much fun there we decided to take the lift and subsequent hike once again to do it all over. Unfortunately this run didn’t turn out to be as much fun for one in our group. Tracey snagged a rock on her way down, twisting her leg, ripping off her ski, and as we later found out breaking a bone in her ankle. We were as far out as you can possibly get and she couldn’t stand. Fortunately a nice local stopped and alerted ski patrol to her exact location. The remaining members of the group still managed to have a few more awesome runs on our way back to the parking lot, before we met up with Tracey at the medical center to receive the bad news. She was planning to come back out in a month for some more skiing, so let’s hope for a speedy recovery.

Despite the unfortunate accident, we had an amazing time. There was so much snow I’m not sure how you couldn’t have love it. And as they say, if there wasn’t a little danger involved than it wouldn’t be any fun. Here are some pictures Kim snapped throughout the weekend.

Beaver Creek on Dwellable

Keystone on Dwellable